French-Pressed God Almighty

I am going to pretend I am a dude version of Mrs. Frizzle and pull out a Magic School Bus with a pet iguana and a politically correct assortment of school kids so that I can take you on a field trip through time. Plutonium powered DeLoreans are too expensive and time traveling phone booths are hugely impractical so a Magic School Bus will have to do.

I want to go way back to the beginning, back into the time when you did not have to wear clothes in polite society (and no, I am not talking about the sixties), back into a time where there was nothing separating Man and God. Other than getting to walk around naked naming animals all day, have you ever thought about how amazing it had to have been in the Garden of Eden where God literally could walk around and share the secrets of the Universe with you?  People had not been around long enough to invite sin into the world so creation was still a perfect place where a Holy God could dwell. Adam and Eve did not have to “pray” like we do, they simply had to turn around and personally ask God whatever they wanted to know. This was exactly what God wanted.

And then a talking snake that happened to be possessed by Satan came into the scene and ruined everything. Suddenly the world was not so perfect and God could not stay here anymore. It was not as though He did not want to be with us, but a Holy and perfect God could not live in a place that had been corrupted by evil. And so it was that we kicked God out of His own garden. We robbed God of His companionship with his own creation when we chose to let sin into the world and it would be a long time before God could get back what we stole from Him.

Now we are going to hop back onto the Magic School Bus and travel to the time of the Ark of the Covenant. If you traveled to the time of Indiana Jones and saw a bunch of Nazi’s getting their faces melted off upon opening the Ark you went too far and I am sorry for that rather disturbing image you had to witness. No, we are going back to the time of Moses where God has only recently freed His people from the bondage of Egyptian slavery and now the nation of Israel has found itself wandering in the desert. God found a way to get back with His people by teaching some gifted craftsmen how to build what we now know as the Ark. It was a gold box that literally held the manifested presence of God that the people were to carry with them wherever they went. The world was not perfect yet, but this little box was and God was able to get a small foothold back into His own Creation. What is absolutely amazing is that God loved Humanity so much that He was willing to squeeze Himself into a tiny man-made box just so that He could be with His people.

The next stop on this magical journey through time is after the Israelites have settled down and it is time to give God a better dwelling place so Solomon starts building the Temple. It is a big magnificent building unmatched by any building ever built and has a room called the Holy of Holies that the presence of God saturates like a cloud. It is better than being stuck in a box but there are still some problems with being in a man- made structure, mainly that it can be burnt down (which of course did happen, twice) and that only the priests could enter into the Holy of Holies while everyone else had to wait outside. God still could not walk around with His people.

That was of course until a baby named Jesus showed up in a feeding trough and changed everything. Now we have God literally walking around with His people as a man. He ate, He slept, He joked around and had friendship restored with Humanity. But then He died. He came back, and then left again. God had something bigger in mind because 50 days later the most incredible thing in history happened. God “poured out His Spirit” just like He promised on what we now know as “Pentecost.” Now God got to be inside of His people. We were made perfect like the Garden, our hearts became the Ark, our bodies became the Temple, and God was doing something in His Creation that even Adam and Eve did not get to be a part of. They could be with God, but we can have Him living and breathing inside of us.

 

Now the Magic School Bus has landed at my kitchen table this very morning and we see me sitting down with sleepy eyes and an open Bible. I am having what I call my “quiet time with God.” It is a cute little routine where I crawl out of bed and try and spend a couple minutes reading the Bible and telling God how much I want to serve Him. I would love to tell you that I depend on this time for my sustenance, that I thirst for this time like a deer panting for water, but if I were really honest what I really depend on to get me going is what is brewing behind me in my coffee pot. I used to tell people that I was not addicted to coffee but that is a lie. I need it every morning if I am going to be any kind of social and that is really what I look forward to when I wake up.

I wish that I could tell you that I woke up every day longing for the presence of a God who has done everything possible to be with me but I can’t. I wish I could tell you that my “quiet time” was comparable to literally sitting at the feet of the God of the Universe every morning but it isn’t. I wish that I could say that those 30 minutes every morning redefine my entire day and that I live my life differently because I spent them with God but sometimes I feel like I am living life all by myself without really being with the God I talk about. I wish that I could tell you that God had not wasted all of His efforts in wanting to be with me. I realized that I have French-pressed God Almighty into another box, only this one is much smaller. It is the box of my life.

I have tried to squeeze God into a tiny corner of my day when He wants to be my everything in every circumstance. He wants every part of my day and everything I do to be done with the idea that He is actually with me in mind. Sadly, God does not always have every part of my to-do list. God does not want me to just schedule more time to “be with Him,” but just to realize that in everything I do He is already with me living through me. I have His presence with me at all times and I need to take that presence into places where He would not be allowed otherwise.

 This changes my “quiet time” completely. Instead of trying to muster up the motivation to give Him a couple minutes of my day, I want to let God be fully alive through me at every point in my routine. He has gone through a whole lot to get the time that belongs to Him anyway, I might as well return the favor.

Are you guilty of squeezing God back into a box of your schedule or priorities?

What areas of your life have you allowed to function without God being an active part?

Have you realized everything that God has done just to spend time with you?

 

Comment below with your response.